1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for recording and reproducing information and an information reproducing method for reproducing information contents recorded on a recording medium.
2. Description of Related Art
A video tape recorder, a DVD recorder, a hard disk recorder, or the like are examples of known apparatuses for recording and reproducing information contents such as movies and television programs onto/from a recording medium. A videotape, an optical disk, and a magnetic disk are examples of the recording medium. Recording is performed for example in such a way that the user records a plurality of programs each of which is broadcast by the television system onto one recording medium by using the apparatus for recording and reproducing information. Those apparatuses for recording and reproducing information are therefore provided with the so called the head finding function so that the start position of each program on the recording medium is automatically found out and the reproduction is started from the found position. The head finding operation, however, is merely an operation for searching for the start position of each program, and is not sufficient to respond to user""s various demands.
For instance, after having interrupted the reproduction of a certain program A to start the reproduction of another program B, the user may want to watch the former program A once again from the position where the reproduction was interrupted. In such a case, he or she will have to perform the fast the forward or rewinding operation while monitoring the screen in order to find out the position of interruption in the program A.
The invention has been made to solve the problem and it is an object of the invention to provide an apparatus for recording and reproducing information and an information reproducing method, in which the reproducing operation can be restarted without the need of troublesome operations from a position where reproduction was interrupted, for all information contents recorded on the recording medium.
According to the invention, there is provided an apparatus for recording and reproducing information which can record a plurality of information contents onto a recording medium and reproduce the recorded information contents, the apparatus comprising: a reproduction history information generating part for generating reproduction history information representing a reproduction history of the information content recorded on the recording medium; and a management memory for storing the reproduction history information in correspondence to each of the information contents.
According to the invention, there is provided an information reproducing method for reproducing desired information content from a recording medium on which a plurality of information contents have been recorded, the method comprising: a reproduction history information generating step of generating reproduction history information representing a reproduction history for each of the information contents recorded on the recording medium; and a reproduction control step of performing a reproduction control of the information content based on the reproduction history information.